How to Boom a Picture.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XLV, Issue 6, 10 August 1910, Page 8

How to Boom a Picture.

An amazing tale of the art of bluff and of bluff in art is told in the “Gil Blas,” and If only half of it is true, art dealers, art critics, and artists are most of them frauds, and the great majority of the public is gulled. “How to boom a picture” is the art of bluff described. “The serious and sincere artist is now an anomaly. He and his painting are not wanted. He has only two ways of making a living—either to paint faked old masters, or to paint mad pictures of hie own.” The tricks of the trade in spurious old masters are so well known that they no longer require showing up. The art of booming a new “mad” painter, who is not really mad at all, but pretends to be, is not so well known, and the writer reveals its methods in detail. “Nearly all art experts, and two-thirds of the art critics, are parasites, who pocket 10 per cent, of the value of all the pictures they judge or criticise,” is- his prefatory remark. The dealer’s method for booming a new painter, then, is this. He catches him as young as possible, preferably at an exhibition of the wildest canvases at the autumn salon or the Paris Independents, and commissions him to paint a hundred pictures in a year. The dealer counts the pictures without looking at them, and sends them one by one, or in twos or threes, to the Hotel Drouot at judicious intervals. What the pictures are is not of the slightest importance. The dealer has confederates, who raise the prices at each sale, and he buys them in himself. After a few months the young artist’s canvases have a market value. A few months after that, more judicious booming has turned him into a modern master, the latest form of impressionism, called by some other name, for impressionism is out of date. At the same time, the critics have to be captured, and this is how it is done. The critic is shown some fearful daub, worthy to have been painted by a donkey with its tail. He utters cries of horror. The dealer says: “What? You don’t like it? Take it home with you as a favour to me, and keep it for six months. Then you will see.” In due course an art amateur calls, and the critic shows him the picture. “What a masterpiece! The most modern thing in art I have seen for a long time. The critic begins to agree. Another visit from another enthusiastic amateur is enough, and he writes a column of panegyric upon the new master. Both amateurs were confederates of the dealer. The critic’s article is the decisive stroke. The new master is boomed, and becomes the vogue. Wealthy and simple-minded amateurs sell their Corots and buy up collections of the new master’s works. The new master makes about 10 per cent profit, and the dealer 90 per cent on the transactions.